Archive for month: October, 2013

Looking around the gallery today I ran across this terrific little pop-up book by Lark Preyapongpisan titled, Witches I Have Known. Perfect book to celebrate Halloween.

Letterpress printed and case bound with hand made paper covers, one of the passages in this intriguing little book reads:

“Frustrated or bored she sold her soul
to Satan for the eccentric luxury of
transforming herself into a blue boat.
(why blue one wonders…)”

Lark tells us this is, “a simple little book about an ancestor named Mary Bradbury. She was convicted of being a witch during the Salem Hysteria. Despite being condemned she escaped burning. This is the family’s version of what happened.”

23 Sandy Gallery and the University of Puget Sound Collins Memorial Library, invite artists to participate in Book Power Redux, an international juried exhibition of book art focusing on social and political issues. Artist books can be a powerful vehicle for social change and activism. For this show the jurors have a strong interest in works that shine a light on some of the most vital issues of our day: race, diversity, equality, justice, bullying, poverty, civil rights and more. And, don’t forget we are still a country at war.

Book artists have a unique opportunity with an accessible, multi-dimensional, multi-media format that can go beyond just making things to making things happen. The current social and political issues listed above are just a few topics concerned artists can use to raise consciousness, call for justice or provoke action. This exhibit is open to handmade book and paper arts related works. Artist books, sculptural books, book objects, altered books, zines, and broadsides are all encouraged.

Book Power Redux will start at 23 Sandy Gallery and then travel to Collins Memorial Library at the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, and will be featured during a national conference focused on Race and Pedagogy. This exhibition will be juried by Jane Carlin, library director at Collins Memorial Library; MalPina Chan, a working artist and curator; and Laura Russell, owner/director of 23 Sandy Gallery.

Ever encounter a book excavation? Well, wait until you see these amazing works! 23 Sandy is pleased to share a new artist to the gallery, James Allen. This remarkable young artist recently moved to Portland and brought in some of the most intriguing and popular works we’ve ever had in the gallery. His work draws ooohs and aaahs and curious questions from nearly everyone—young and old—who visits the gallery.

A “book excavation” is a sculptural work of art made by transforming various types of old books using precise cuts with a scalpel or knife, carving pages one by one until an astonishing new composition reveals itself. This almost surgical focus of dissecting books results in a wholly new object infused with a graphical history that evolves as the artist exposes each layer of the book while cutting around interesting images or text. For most artists working in this remarkable medium, the process is performed without pre-planning or mapping out the contents before cutting into the books pages and/or covers. Finished book excavations often appear as cross sections of the book, carved to create an alternate universe previously hidden between the covers.

Skulduggery by James Allen (Detail)

About his Skulduggery piece, Allen tells us, “I opened this tome of DC Comics somewhere in the middle, laid it flat, and cut down through the pages of both the front and back covers. Through the right panel we see the distant past and as the pages go deeper we see more and more recent images. While the left panel shows the most recent images and the deeper pages reveal images from further in past. In this way the pages of the book show a condensed history of all the 75 years of DC Comics all in one vignette. I particularly like the image of the Twin Towers in the upper right portion of the left panel and how it relates to the dichotomy of good vs. evil and hero vs. villain.”

American Red Cross by James Allen

Just last week Allen delivered three new pieces to the gallery. One is an 1950’s-era American Red Cross handbook (shown at right) and the other is a 1976 Texas Instruments TI-30 calculator handbook, titled One Possible Solution. These two books are most intriguing as they have been left unsealed so that the pages can be flipped through to see the cutting process. This is fascinating as many book excavation pages are sealed to stabilize the book and make the pages inaccessible.

Another of Allen’s book excavations was created using the book Historic Costume in Picture. Allen tells us, “Originally it was a soft cover, but I decided to give it a hard cover before I began the cutting into it. This is one of the rare cases where I added something to an existing book. In the end I also decided to add some gold leaf to the inside edge of the cut cover. All of the pages lie how they were originally bound. The book includes images of men and women in historic costumes through the ages but I decided to focus on the costumes of women throughout history.”

Did you know there is an exhibition of the Al-Mutanabbi artist books in Tacoma right now? If you are in the area stop by on Wednesday evening to hear project founder Beau Beasoleil talk about the project. He’s a brilliant, thoughtful, deep thinker who has a lot to say about this amazing project that he has championed so strongly for so many years. What he has accomplished with this project is quite remarkable and his talk is highly recommended.

Beau Beausoleil is the founder of the Al-Mutanabbi Street Coalition and co-curator of the Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here book exhibit. He recently published the anthology of writings Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here: Poets and Writers Respond to the Bombing of Baghdad’s “Street of the Booksellers.”Exploring the question “Where does al-Mutanabbi Street start?” the book looks at both communities and nations, seeking to show the commonality between a small street in Baghdad and major cultural centers. Chapters examine al-Mutanabbi Street as a place that has long offered sanctuary to diverse Iraqi voices, and a place where the roots of democracy took hold hundreds of years ago.

A recent gallery addition, James Allen, and his remarkable book excavations inspired this curated collection and I was surprised to discover that we have nearly 40 altered books in inventory. Altered books are a hot topic of with many artists who alter, sculpt and carve books. Using found books, these artists transform vintage or modern, mundane or extraordinary and especially everyday books into fascinating works of art.

One of my favorites is San Francisco artist Alexis Arnold, as shown above, her crystallized book titled The Phantom Tollbooth was a children’s adventure novel and modern fairy tale by Norton Juster. It was first published in 1961 with illustrations by Jules Feiffer and in Alexis’ hands is now a gorgeous sculpture. You may remember Alexis’ work from our Infinite Possibilities exhibition last fall. Both of her titles in that show were crowd favorites.